Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

When Bernie Sanders began his race for the presidency, it was considered by the political establishment and the media to be a "fringe" campaign, something not to be taken seriously. After all, he was just an independent senator from a small state with little name recognition. His campaign had no money, no political organization, and it was taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment. By the time Sanders' campaign came to a close, however, it was clear that the pundits had gotten it wrong.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

In Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich reveals the entrenched cycles of power and influence that have damaged American capitalism, perpetuating a new oligarchy in which the 1 percent get ever richer and the rest - middle and working class alike - lose ever more economic agency, making for the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity since World War II.

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years - and the presidency, from Reagan to George W. Bush - in a whole new light.

America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History

From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.

Unspeakable

Chris Hedges has been telling truth to (and against) power since his earliest days as a radical journalist. He is an intellectual bomb-thrower who continues to confront American empire in the most incisive, challenging ways. The kinds of insights he provides into the deeply troubled state of our democracy cannot be found anywhere else.

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe

In The Euro, Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent - and the world - from further devastation. Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite. As Stiglitz persuasively argues, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the euro.

Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United

For two centuries, the Framers' ideas about political corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. In the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have fallen behind. Why do the "have-it-alls" have so much more? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it---until now.

American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Rich

Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity.

Joseph M. Hidalgo says:"Very insightful! Technical at first but a must read for today's political environment!!"

Who Rules the World?

In an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky argues that the United States, through its military-first policies and its unstinting devotion to maintaining a world-spanning empire, is both risking catastrophe and wrecking the global commons.

Jen says:"Makes you realize those who scream conspiracy are closer to the truth than we would hope!"

The Lost Art of Listening, Second Edition: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships

One person talks; the other listens. It's so basic that we take it for granted. Unfortunately, most of us think of ourselves as better listeners than we actually are. Why do we so often fail to connect when speaking with family members, romantic partners, colleagues, or friends? How do emotional reactions get in the way of real communication? This thoughtful, witty, and empathic book has already helped over 100,000 people break through conflicts and transform their personal and professional relationships.

The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East

This is a book rife with revelations, from the secret communications between the Obama administration and the Iranian government to dispatches from the front lines of the new field of financial warfare. For listeners of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, The Iran Wars exposes the hidden history of a conflict most Americans don't even realize is being fought but whose outcome could have far-reaching geopolitical implications.

So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government

In this sometimes shocking and always riveting book, Robert G. Kaiser who has covered Congress, the White House and national politics for The Washington Post since 1963, explains how and why over the last four decades, Washington became a dysfunctional capital.

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance - are being made not by humans but by mathematical models. In theory this should lead to greater fairness. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black-box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society.

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned - and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly toppled the global financial system have come to infiltrate all American businesses, putting us on a collision course with another cataclysmic meltdown.

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way much of what we do can be defined as being motivators. From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we've assumed.

Idrees Haddad says:"Great insights into what motivates and demotivates"

Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics

In today's post-truth political landscape, there is a carefully concealed but ever-growing industry of organized misinformation that exists to create and disseminate lies in the service of political agendas. Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters for America present a revelatory history of this industry - which they've dubbed Lies, Incorporated - and show how it has crippled legislative progress on issues including tobacco regulation, public health care, climate change, gun control, immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Once, war was a temporary state of affairs - a violent but brief interlude between times of peace. Today America's wars are everywhere and forever: Our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon. As war expands, so does the role of the US military. Today military personnel don't just "kill people and break stuff". Instead they analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol for pirates.

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity

The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story - the US today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.

Publisher's Summary

In an era of ballooning corporate campaign expenditures, unleashed by the Supreme Court in Citizens United, trust in our government is at an all time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress - and that our Republic has been lost.

Using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left, Republic, Lost not only makes clear how the economy of influence defeats the will of the people, but offers cogent strategies to correct our course - from a constitutional convention to a Regent Presidency.

A onetime friend of Barack Obama, Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard, is as critical of the president and the Democratic Party as he is of Republicans. Both have allowed the core institution of our democracy to become little more than a shill for the most powerful moneyed interests in our Republic.

America may be divided, argues Lessig, but we must recognize that corruption is our common enemy, and we must find a way to fight against it.

I am going to write this review. Like the reader. Read. It. Throughout. He would start each sentence with a normal flow. And then. At the end. He. Would. Add. Pauses. This has the effect of making the sentences sound. Like. They had. Periods. Where there were. No. Periods. It would not have been so annoying. If. He only. Did. It. For. Emphasis. But instead, he did it on just about. Every. Single. Sentence.

This book should be required reading (listening) for all Americans of all political persuasions. It is at the top of my list of nonfiction books read or listened to in 2011. Lessig's reading is passionate. His arguments and examples are convincing. You do not have to agree with every argument to be convinced of the basic conclusion of the book--that our government has been corrupted and stolen from the people by large corporate financial interests. Listen to the book and then join and become active in Rootstrikers or one of the several other organizations he lists.

What made the experience of listening to Republic, Lost the most enjoyable?

Lessig explores the problems associated with campaing finances as they relate to the disfunction in our government. It is a wonderful non-partisan exploration of how the people lost control of our representative govenrment to the monied few. Listen, learn, and act.

I think Lessig is a brilliant speaker, but a so-so narrator. Without visuals to go with his spoken word, this listen tends to drag a bit here and there as he labors to make his points, though in the end the points are profoundly important to every American regardless of party affiliation. Ignore at your own peril, people.

This book should be required reading (listening) for all Americans of all political persuasions. It is at the top of my list of nonfiction books read or listened to in 2011. Lessig's reading is passionate. His arguments and examples are convincing. You do not have to agree with every argument to be convinced of the basic conclusion of the book--that our government has been corrupted and stolen from the people by large corporate financial interests. Listen to the book and then join and become active in Rootstrikers or one of the several other organizations he lists.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard Law School. In “Republic, Lost” Lessig crystallizes the reasons for American apathy about voting in general elections; i.e. the state of America’s current “moneyocracy” makes a vote hardly worth exercising. Wake up America.

Though one appreciates Lessig’s critical evaluation of the American election system, his ivory tower solutions only reinforce voter apathy. Like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, Lessig’s book is mired in a fantasy. Neither the inchoate “Occupy” movement nor Lessig’s intellectual exercise can change the inborn cause of American inequality; i.e., pursuit of money, power, and prestige, the unchanging nature of humankind.

Rights inherent in the freedom of American capitalism reward greed and denigrate or ignore altruism. The burgeoning gap between rich and poor aggravates and insures an American aristocracy of wealth. As long as corporations continue to endorse executive pay at 50 to 500 times the income of average employees, money will continue to distort democratic policy. Lessig presents the idea of paying legislators higher salaries to blunt corruption. To suggest, which Lessig does, paying a million dollars a year to a congressman to mitigate undue influence by corporations will only raise the stakes for moneyed interest’s distortion of public policy; not to mention, increase the chasm between haves and have-nots.

Capitalism is not a perfect system and people like Lessig are important because they reveal those imperfections. Americans are frustrated with politicians and the current political environment. People like Lessig and Obama give reason for hope that change for the better will come; never fast enough but always incrementally forward.

Lessig breaks down how money corrupts politicians and leads to legislation that does not benefit the public. His non-partisan approach gives an eye-opening look into corruption spanning across all political parties.

The subject is really important and this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how laws are approved and why there is no real legitimacy to them.

That said, the narration isn't the best feature of the author and his solutions do not touch on the subject of hidden influences on Congress and how to stop "hidden lobby" (I'm sorry, english is not my first language so I don't know if this is the correct way to say it).

So if campaign funding does stop being made by companies (as recently happened in Brazil), what's stopping them of buying policy makers and congressmen with hidden and untraceable bribes if we don't have some kind of full disclosure of the assets of anyone in the aforementioned positions?

If we don't have that or something really close to it there's really no way to believe in the legitimacy of any law or in democracy in general as there will always be the threat of interest groups with money capturing them.

Where does Republic, Lost rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It is the most lucid and common sense explanation of complex political problems that I have ever read

What did you like best about this story?

It offered carefully reasoned solutions to our "broken government" problem that will be both challenging and essential if we are to solve any of the critical problems we currently face.

Have you listened to any of Lawrence Lessig’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

What was once known as "the greatest deliberative body in the world" can now only boast it is the greatest fundraising body in the world.

Many of our federal legislators are known to spend more than half of their time fundraising; they have to in order to keep their jobs. They range from 25% to 80%. "Dialing for dollars." "The lean to the green."

Thus, the biggest problem they are always working on and solving is fundraising. This distracts them and prevents them doing a good job on the one we elected them to do. Hence our most serious problems fester, year after year.

Any additional comments?

I feel more optimistic better understanding the problems, and discovering that there is now something constructive that concerned and self-interested citizens can all do to repair the dysfunctional campaign system. We cannot afford a government so burdened and impaired by their campaign war chests.